How to Touch the Sky
by HecateA
Summary: Katie is afraid of heights, but when she realizes that whoever her soulmate is, they spend a lot of time in the air... well, she'll get creative. Oneshot. Written for Romance Awareness Day 29: The outline of your shadow is your soulmate.


**Author's Note: **Enjoy! School's back in session so I won't be writing like such a maniac, not to mention that I've now finished Romance Awareness! For the last time: Written for 31 Days of Soulmate AUs Day 29: The outline of your shadow is your soulmate.

**Disclaimer: **The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

**Warnings: **Sick parent; child gets injured roughhousing

* * *

**Stacked with: **MC4A; Lessons Learned; Sapphic September; Fall Bingo; Shipping Wars;

**Individual Challenge(s): **Sapphic Bribery; 3rd Rule Bribery (HP Edition) (Y); Summer Vacation; Seeds; Golden Times; Old Shoes; Themes & Things A (New Beginnings); Themes & Things B (Risk); The 3rd Rule; Ethnic & Present; Rian-Russo Inversion (Y); Tiny Terror; Unaccompanied Minor; Long Haul; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux; Black Ribbon (Y); Black Ribbon Redux (Y)

**Representation(s): **

**Bonus challenge(s): **Corvid Brain; Hot Apple; Second Verse (Spinning Plates); Chorus (Mouth of Babes)

**Tertiary bonus challenge:** Schooner

**Word Count: **3042

* * *

_**Shipping Wars**_

**Ship (Team): **Angelina Johnson/Katie Bell/Alicia Spinnet

**List (Prompt): **Fall Micro 2 (Flight)

* * *

_**Summer Bingo**_

**Space Address (Prompt): **3D (School)

* * *

**How to Touch the Sky **

When Katie Bell was four years old, Dad was running late to pick them up from school. It wasn't an unusual occurrence; Mum's chemo treatments were sometimes hard to time and plan around, and sometimes things changed at the last minute and Dad had to rush in from a construction site somewhere to pick them up if she was too ill. That was why the teachers were always so nice to them when something like this happened, and let them play in the gated park behind the school while they waited.

So that's what Katie, Christopher, Dustin, and Jack were doing. Well, Christopher was reading under a tree to try and get his homework done—Katie saw him do that a lot and he'd once told her that he did it in case he'd have to make dinner when they got home, and then help the other boys with their homework. So Katie really didn't want to be trouble for him since he was so busy, she really didn't want to get in a fight with her brothers. But Dustin still pushed her off the top of the playground.

"Dustin!" Christopher said, shutting his copy of _Treasure Island_ and rushing over to her.

Katie tried not to cry so that her brother didn't win, but her arm really, really hurt. Her knees and elbows and palms were red and scratched up.

"She's fine!" Dustin shouted.

"No she isn't, look at her arm!" Christopher snapped back.

"Is it broken?" Katie whispered. That's when she really started crying. "Christopher it really, really hurts… Christopher I don't want to go to the hospital too, I don't want it to be broken..."

"Oh, Katie… deep breath, try not to move your arm… you two, get down from there! We're going in to find a teacher…" Christopher said. He scooped her up and kissed her hair, before asking Jack to bring their bags inside and follow them in.

* * *

Katie came to sit next to Christopher under the tree and took her own book out of her backpack. It didn't have as many words as Christopher's, but she opened it up and tried to look as serious as him while she read.

"Hey, K," Christopher said, reaching over to brush her hair out of her eyes. "Did you want to go play?"

Katie looked at the playground furtively and then shook her head. To see the whole thing, she had to turn her head and look up, up, up. It felt like the highest thing she had ever seen.

She shook her head.

"Okay," Christopher said. He brushed her hair back. "Want me to read to you?"

She nodded and snuggled up against him, making sure to keep her broken arm safe.

* * *

When the camp counselors had brought her group to the climbing wall, Katie had absolutely refused to go up.

"Alright," the counselor had said. "Alright sweetie, don't panic, no need to cry about it… why don't you join Group B? They're at the park for now…"

The Group B kids all thought Katie was stupid for crying and being afraid of scaling the wall and they barely knew her anyways, so nobody played with her. Katie didn't mind; she managed to sneak a spot on the swingset. She figured that she would spend the entire hour swinging, making sure she didn't get too high off the ground. And that's what she was doing when she noticed that her shadow, instead of following her up and down as she swung up and down… well, it was as if a string holding it to Katie had been snapped and it flew off. Literally: it flew off. She watched her shadow, with a mind of its own, take off across the sandy playground, swoop across the grass, and then tilt upwards before vanishing.

Next time she was close enough to the ground, Katie dug her heels into the sand and hopped off the swing. She looked down and looked around her but… well, she was shadowless. She looked around and wondered if the other kids around her had also lost theirs, but no. It was just Katie's shadow that had flown off.

While she was looking around, another clique of girls rushed her swing and took it. Katie didn't mind; she was too confused to do anything other than walk around the playground to see if she could stand in the right place and make her shadow come back.

* * *

The runaway shadow problem was a recurring one, which led to Katie spending a lot of time in her room or in the schoolyard checking that hers was still firmly attached. And usually, it was. If she raised her hand, her shadow raised its own. If she hopped, her shadow hopped. But sometimes it flew away; and she was sure that it was flying because it always went _up. _

She pretended that she was reading a book about disappearing shadows in school once, so that Christopher would talk to her about it while he was boiling water for tonight's spaghetti dinner.

"It's an old wives' tale," her brother explained. "They say that sometimes your shadow will show you what your soulmate is doing."

"Really?" Katie asked.

"It's not true, Katie," Christopher reminded her. "That would be magic."

"Right," Katie said. "Right, right, right. I know that."

But her shadow apparently didn't, because just as she turned to look at it with this new information in mind, it vanished.

* * *

Eventually, Katie got tired of watching her shadow dart away like her mother sometimes had to be rushed to the hospital unexpectedly, get ahead of her like her brothers who went on to the big kid school, like her dad who was always running in and out of the house between his two jobs... Everyone was running and her shadow felt like the one thing Katie should be able to keep up with.

It would require going up, though. Up, up, up…

And so Katie made a big decision while she was at the library. Christopher followed her to the shelf the librarian had pointed her to while Dustin and Jack went off in their own directions.

"Airplanes?" Christopher whispered to Katie when they were in the non-fiction aisle.

She nodded, not looking up from the piece of paper with the call number that the librarian had given her. She wandered down the aisle some more trying to match it to the stack and Christopher followed.

"Why do you want books on airplanes?" Christopher asked again in a low voice.

"Because if I'm going to fly them I need to know how they work," Katie said. She finally found the right section and started plucking books off the shelf one after the other. She was going to sit at one of the tables with an enormous pile and look through all of them, like Christopher did for school, before deciding which ones she should take home.

"Katie…" Christopher asked, sounding confused.

"Shh," she said. "We're in a library."

He kept going, his voice a whisper.

"Katie, aren't you afraid of heights?" he checked.

"I won't be when I'm in a big safe airplane and I have a license to fly one," Katie said.

This was how she was going to touch the sky too.

Christopher didn't look too sure. He looked at Katie curiously, but then snapped out of it and offered to hold some books for her.

* * *

When Mrs. Fields told Katie that pilots had to be good at maths and science, Katie started getting straight As. In English class, she did a whole presentation about what she wanted to be when she grew up that explained how people became certified pilots in Great Britain. On Halloween, she dressed up as Amelia Earheart and it was her favourite costume ever even if nobody at school got it. For the science fair, Mum helped Katie make all kinds of different paper planes to see which ones flew faster and further because of their aerodynamic properties, and they made a chart. Katie even got a new dress to wear to present and Dad drove them by the hospital after so that they could show Mum the ribbon that she got. None of this stopped her shadow from occasionally running away, but Katie liked the way that the fire burning in her chest felt. She felt like she was getting closer. There was a lot of things that she couldn't do much about, but this felt like taking small steps forwards. She'd have to be 21 before taking any flight lessons, but still. She had to start somewhere and this was a place.

On her eleventh birthday, Katie got a book all to herself about the history of aviation and a baseball cap that had "Boeing" written on the front of it. Mum let her wear it at the breakfast table while they ate pancakes. Dad was telling Katie all about how he had the day off so he'd drive her to the airport so that they could watch the planes take off and land when the door knocked.

"Dustin, can you get that sweetie?" Mum asked.

Dustin went to answer the door and called back, telling Mum and Dad that somebody was at the door for Katie.

"Maybe Gran sent you a package," Dad suggested. "Let's go see, K…"

"There's no post on Sundays," Jack said.

"We'll see," Mum said. Dad helped her up and when they went to the door, Dustin stood there with a lady wearing a long black skirt and a simple blouse. She looked like the scariest teacher in school, Miss Frobisher—who Katie had never had but was still afraid of. This lady scared her too.

"Good morning, Mr and Mrs. Bell," the lady said. She turned her eyes to Katie and her eyes seemed to pierce right into Katie from behind her glasses. "And you must be Katie…"

"I don't believe we've met," Mum said quietly.

"My name is Professor McGonagall," the stranger said. "I'm from a highly specialized school that's interested in taking in Katie."

"Oh!" Dad said. "Oh, that's great, Katie!" He turned to look at her and beamed. "You've always been so bright, sweetheart…"

"While this is undoubtedly true, our school has a different educational approach that may be suited to Katie," McGonagall said. "This may be a long story to explain…"

"Of course," Dad said "Come in, ma'am, parlour's right this way."

"May we offer you tea? How do you take your tea? I'll put on the kettle," Mum said.

"Mum, go sit down," Katie said. "I can do it…"

"Miss Bell, I do think you will want to hear this," McGonagall said.

* * *

"No," Katie said when McGonagall was done talking. "I don't want to go."

"Katie," Mum said. "Katie, this is… this is quite a bit of information, but…"

"I don't want to go," she said.

"Katie, sweetheart," Dad said. "This sounds like a better school than what we can send you to…"

"I don't care," Katie said. "I'll go anywhere else."

"Miss Bell," Professor McGonagall said again. Something about her made Katie listen. It was as if she increased gravity… "Miss Bell, has anything strange ever happened around you? Things you couldn't explain, that did not feel quite… natural?"

Katie bit her lip.

"Sometimes my shadow disappears," Katie confessed. "It… it flies away."

"Your shadow flies away," McGonagall repeated. She nodded solemnly. It was the first time Katie had admitted it out loud and never in her wildest dreams would she have thought that a grown-up would take her seriously about it.

"While that may be related to older magic, you might understand what I mean when I say this next part," McGonagall said just as severely from behind her glasses. "Magic is quite the force. Without regular use, it develops its own will. Sometimes it does benign things but sometimes it can be much more serious, dangerous even. Witches and wizards who try to hide their magic may end up hurting themselves and the people around them. This is why training at Hogwarts is so important."

"Katie, it'll be a good education," Dad said.

"Education is so, so important," Mum added.

"But it won't teach her all the maths she needs to become a pilot," Christopher said from the living room entrance.

Katie looked up. All three of her brothers had been lurking there, absolutely stunned, but only Christopher had truly heard what McGonagall had said—what Katie had heard. Only he had understood.

"Oh, K…" Dad said. Mum ran a hand through her hair.

"There will be so much to discover," Mum whispered encouragingly. "This will be just as exciting…"

Her smile was beautiful and encouraging, but Katie still wanted to cry.

"Did you want to become a pilot, Miss Bell?" McGonagall asked. Katie nodded but looked at her knees to avoid the professor seeing her eyes get all watery and sad. Just because they had company didn't mean that her brothers wouldn't laugh at her for it too.

"What was that?" McGonagall asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Katie said quietly.

"Well," McGonagall said. "I dare say, we'll find something similar for you to do at Hogwarts if you're willing to give us a chance…"

McGonagall looked up, curious.

* * *

Since they didn't know when Dad's next day off would be and since McGonagall offered to accompany them, they went to Diagon Alley right that day. Katie was shocked as she looked around The Leaky Cauldron: the first magical place she'd ever been in. People were dressed in all kinds of different ways, mugs floated about the pub, magic wands much like McGonagall's were resting on tables… it was extraordinary.

"Bloody hell," Dad said, shaking his head. "And all of this was under our noses the whole time?"

McGonagall nodded and explained something about secrecy statutes that Katie didn't really understand because she was too busy looking at a giant man with a wild mane of hair and a basket full of ferrets and toads. Dad readjusted the cuffs of his shirt as he looked around. Before they'd gone, he'd put on one of his nice shirts as if he had a meeting with the bank or something else very important.

He turned to look at her, smiled, and took her hand as they plunged in Diagon Alley.

It took them a few hours to shop even with McGonagall's expertise and, thankfully, a small pouch of gold from the school that helped Katie buy books, a wand, a potion kit, black school robes… Even after all that time at Diagon Alley, Katie still wasn't quite over the amount of smells and sounds and sights that surrounded them.

"May I show you something that is explicitly forbidden for first years to own but that I think you shall enjoy, Miss Bell?" McGonagall said.

"Yes ma'am," Katie answered, hugging the long box containing her wand to her chest.

"Go on, then," McGonagall said. "Go look at that storefront window, where all the other children are crowding. We will wait for you here."

Katie nodded and shyly approached the mass of kids and weaseled her way to the front of the group to see… broomsticks. No: _flying_ broomsticks—one of them was even hovering _in _the window!

Katie gasped, but none of the other children looked surprised to see this. They must be from Wizarding families, like McGonagall had explained.

"That's the Nimbus 1999 I was telling you about," one girl who wore her hair in afro puffs told her friend.

"I bet we could go twice as far as we go on your dad's comet," her friend said.

"Shut up Alicia, they'll hear you," the first girl replied, elbowing her. Then she grinned. "But we totally could."

"You know how to fly?" Katie blurted. She immediately blushed to the root of her hair. She hadn't meant to interrupt; she'd just been so… well…

"Yeah," the girl said again. "I mean, we're not supposed to, but we wanted to learn."

"Me too," Katie said.

"Nice!" the girl called Alicia grinned. Her friend immediately launched into a million questions.

"What kind of broomstick have you used? How high have you gotten? Have you ever tried flying in the rain?"

"Oh," Katie said. She blushed then and wondered if keeping her Boeing cap on when going to a wizard shopping street had been a mistake. "I, umm… I just meant that I've always wanted to learn. I'm… I'm not from a Wizard family."

"Oh," the first girl said. "Well, that's alright. I'm Angelina, she's Alicia."

"Katie," she said. "Katie Bell."

"That's pretty. You know, flying lessons are mandatory in first year at Hogwarts, so maybe we'll all learn together," Angelina said. "You know, brooms like being paid attention to and connected with—if you really want to learn you'll probably be a natural…"

Katie gasped. "Really?"

"Yeah, it's going to be totally awesome," Alicia said. Then someone called out her name and she looked over her shoulder. "Oh, that'll be Mum… I've got to go."

"My Mum'll be with her," Angelina said, wrinkling her nose. She turned back to Katie. "We should totally meet up and sit together on the train."

Katie's heart skipped a beat. "Really?"

"Yeah, that's a good idea," Alicia said. "Katie, you'll be at King's Cross, yeah?"

"Yes," Katie said, not knowing if this was true. Did people really get to a wizarding school by taking the train?

"Good!" Angelina said. "See you then!"

And they both ran off in the crowd.

Katie looked at the broomsticks one more time before making her way back to where McGonagall and her Dad waited. McGonagall looked a little smug and Dad smiled, as if he'd been filled in.

"Well, Miss Bell?" McGonagall asked. "Do you think you'll be able to make yourself comfortable at Hogwarts?"

Katie looked back over her shoulder once before turning to McGonagall and nodding.

"I think it'll be alright," she said.

"Excellent," McGonagall said. She handed Katie her books, which had all been wrapped in brown paper and string. "There's an extra book in there; it's not required reading by any means but I thought you might appreciate the section of _Quidditch Through the Ages _on broomsticks…"

Katie smiled and hugged the package to her chest.


End file.
